Work Text:
“You were brave to be alone for so long.”
—CLAMP
×××HOLIC
Emporio possessed his wish, his desire, in a pool of embarrassment and guilt. Weather was out of commission for the foreseeable future, and as the time passed he was wrecked with uneasy sleep and its consequences emerged: his head would loll like a wilting flower—very few blossom in this concrete jungle—in the middle of conversations; he would yawn incessantly throughout the day, sometimes consecutively much to the bemusement of Anasui and Ermes; and unbeknownst to the cherub, to the adlapsarian[1] seraph, there had formed phantasmic lines under his eyes whose full arcs would only be completed in a different where and when.
“Emporio, what’s up?” It was Foo Fighters. He snapped to attention and saw their pale face hovering far above his, their shadow engulfing him. The fan above whirred in its diurnal revolutions. Briefly his heart beat harsher and there flashed a spell of dizziness in his head, blurring his vision and, for some reason, seemingly, to him, caused a flare, stemming from his heart, in his throat. Their face was to him unreadable—he had had scarce acquaintance with people, had remained only as an unknown
(peepin’ tom)
voyeur in the shadowed forgotten corners of the penitentiary, which helped little with deciphering the hazy icy eyes peering at him. But if he had to guess, their eyes bore concern. He stared at their bare shoulder, wondering what it must feel like to wear overalls. “You look kind of…I dunno, messy? Need some water?” They handed him a bottle—he remembered reading about a company encroaching upon Native lakes, stealing and bottling their water, then selling those very ones to them[2]—and he placed it next to his foot as he looked back to his computer which showed a MUD[3] christened WISDOM RESURRECTION[4]. “Jolyne told me to keep an eye on ya.”
Not for the first time he felt his heart tug at the mention, at the blossoming and spreading thought of Jolyne, the sameself sensation he felt around Weather, and he stammered much to his horror. The shitty thing about being a precocious child is this: you recognize at once your intellect and limitations, and in this recognition there arise two parties: the one which seeks further maturation and the one which wishes to hit the brakes and indulge in every missed opportunity as a result of adultification: regression. And over the past several nights there were wars of tugs. In the midst of the chaos he recognized a prevailing want he wished to bury, and at this light prodding it threatened to show its full form. In spite of his youth, he had a hunch the others had taken several bullseye guesses at his predicament.
“I’m alright, Foo. You…” can tell Jolyne that? Well, Emporio, that’s a pretty rude way to put it.
He felt a hand land on his shoulder, and suddenly he realized how alone he had been this entire day. Everyone was out, especially Weather, and in his absence his every fiber had come to ache.
“Just tell her I’m alright. I just wanna be alone for now.” He looked back up, tracing the arc of their marble arm to their face. He was certain there was worry, but he wasn’t entirely sure why. Maybe he didn’t want to be sure. Foo headed out and he yawned. They glanced back, then left.
Emporio headed back from his daily heist for bread with an extra item: a large pillow which he guessed had belonged to a guard before the fire. His size was often a point of insecurity for him, but he always delighted in the way it made Weather envelop him in sleep and the way he himself clung onto the man’s bulk. It was as if he submerged himself in Weather’s sea each night, which only made the daily departure all the more tragic. In each trip to the oneiric he buried his face deep into the man’s chest which barred even the smokey blue or burnt maroon pulses of his eyelids. The pillow was long enough for an adult and thus plenty for him. He scanned his environs, snuck out of the trash can at the end of the hall, and booked it down the flight of the stairs to the landing and jumped into the crack. The world blurred blue and next he knew he was on the floor headfirst. All he saw was the fuzz of the crimson carpet.
“What the— Emporio!? Are you okay!?” He got on his hands and knees and lifted his face. He saw Jolyne rise from the pianist’s seat and run to him. This was the
(first, really, don’t you deny it)
last thing he needed now. “I-I’m fine, I promise.” The pillow was in front of him. He felt heat rise in his cheeks and wondered if the blush would show through his dark skin.
Jolyne stood over him a second. Her knees buckled, and now she looked at him. Ordinarily prolonged eye contact was an awkward occasion to him even with Weather, but when it came to the jade eyes before him, he could never escape their pull even as his heart fluttered a nervous staccato. A comfort came over him and yet there hummed a quivering anxiety. “Emporio…” her brow furrowed, she frowned. “I talked with Wez earlier today, and Foo came back and told me you wanted to be alone. But Wez told me everything. I…I want to talk with you.” For a moment he made an effort to look somewhere else as his heart clamped shut to forever hold his secrets. But he couldn’t. He felt everything within tumble and his eyes blur. The pain in his head came in, he winced, and Jolyne pulled him close.
She spoke softly into his ear. The warmth and low tone with which she spoke made him shiver. He kept his arms loose. “Emporio, we’ve all been worried about you.”
“I’m fine…”
She cradled his head in the slope between neck and shoulder and gently rocked him. “I was wondering why you’ve been so sleepy. Ermes and Foo don’t really hang here, nor do I, but eventually I realized this all started after…” she trailed off and on his right temple he felt her jaw clench. “You haven’t been able to sleep very well, have you?” She made a noise he could never write down, one we all make after we realize our breach: “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t ask for your permission to hold you.” She gently held his head from its back and looked at him again. “Is it okay if I hold you?” He nodded. She resumed his position.
“I’ve…we’ve relied on you a lot, Emporio. I think it’s about time you rely on us.”
“Rely on me? But I—”
“Remember when you hid us from that suited freak in brown? We’d’ve been—
(do you want to remind him of what happened to his mother?)
—in deep shit if you didn’t hide us in that jacket. Even this room…I like it here. It’s the only place here where I can relax. Everywhere else is stressful, but this, well, it’s like a haven in the rift.[5] Just rely on me, okay?”
“But I already have. That’s all I ever seem to do.” He felt her grip tighten on him. Normally an increase in pressure would discomfort him, but her clamping had a bleeding warmth.
“Listen, I’ll find a way here tonight, okay? Do you want me to let go now?” Reluctantly he nodded. She sat down in front of him and smiled, reaching her hand out. “Is it okay if I come back here tonight?” He reached for her hand and felt her warmth clasp it. “Y-Yes.” He felt a tingle, and when she let go he found a little bow of string on his index’s distal phalanx. “I’ve got an idea.”
Time was strange in the ghost room. When one peered beyond the panes they were greeted with a frightening sight: above was the heavens in the condition photographers sought, and yet there was no central light source. It was as if each white blot in the firmament had their own sonne and they thus filtered its rays. And where the horizon would be in the outside world there was a seamless shift to midnight. A billion stars flickered in the moonless caliginosity like a tube of glitter vomited onto a black piece of paper, and one could only feel a writhing and squirming dread as they took in the conjoined skies. There was no bleed or dusk or twilight in the middle, no transitory wrinkle. It simply transformed blue into black. And yet if one stepped back and looked at the window frame and the ensuing surroundings they would observe light and shadow shifting as it did in the real world in accordance with the clock beside the flowers. Emporio had been longed conditioned to this oddity, and even if he had never come to know the horrid aspect, the aforementioned clock and the digital display on his computer were handy enough to maintain his circadian rhythm. And on this night he felt drowsiness loom over as did the thief of colors on many days. Passionlessly he clicked the piano keys into something approaching shards of a symphony. Instead of the music sheet in front of him, he focused on the glimmering cobalt string on his finger. He almost went through with the stupid idea of giving it a kiss. There seemed to be no handy label for his feelings as there often was for the flora and fauna abound in this world, and the absence of such nagged at him. He had burned the day away by thumbing through volumes of Escher, van Gogh and Caravaggio, by fondling an old Aztec red[6] pocketbook edition of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and as he did so he pictured the thread flopping to the prison ground and following Jolyne, winding and twisting on the flaked railings and rusty bars and prisoners, door handles and tools for whatever labor was forced upon her, her looking at the thread as it unwound her as he had seen and felt a few times before. She had wrapped it to a bow on his fingers. He found the bunny ear loops adorable.
He turned his head to the right to look at the clock. It was approaching midnight and the lighting of the window indicated as such.
From behind him came a whirring sound he would later compare to reeling in a fish as he felt a light tug on his string. It rose from the contours of the piano and its position on the floor as if moved by an arrector pili. He turned around and saw the blue thread enter the room. The string sought his heat and set its length on the piano as a wavy extent of it neared. On the piano’s hood it collectivized and stacked upon itself, and as it bundled it took the general shape of his dearly beloved. In the Nearctic he would be bitterly reminded of this event when he watched NetNavis in the Megaman.EXE[7] anime be resurrected, the way masses of glinting and darkling blue combined into something whole and unique in the manner of cells upon cells merging and playing off each other to form tissues, and the tissues would collide to form organs, and bone and nerves and hollows and the vascular system until eventually there emerged the organismic level where the Mystery of life, of the glory of consciousness remained: Jolyne sat on top of the piano, her legs in an awkward scrunched-up position, her arms wrapped around their knees for balance. Her feet settled on the keys and the piano made a cacophonous groan.
He looked at his finger and saw that the bow remained, a thread connecting to the tip of her finger where a hole stood. He undid it and the remaining string plugged the void.
Emporio pulled his hat down by the beaver. “I hope that woman won’t cause you trouble.”
“Gwess can go—” the light in her eyes flickered. “You won’t have to worry about her, I can promise you that, Emporio.”
“What did you want to discuss?”
She was silent for a moment. She leaned downward, masking the bottom half of her face in her toned arms, her eyes behind and hovering over the mariposal tattoo and her body involuting unto itself. “I guess you. I’d ask what’s going on, but Weather already told me. Emporio, he doesn’t…” she stammered and fell into a second silence. He looked up and met her at eye level. “No, he doesn’t touch me weird.”
Her eyes widened, her eyebrows rose in shock.
“I’m well aware about…stuff like that.”
She reflected on when she was his age. She remembered the invasive leers of the boys and even some grown men, especially during her brief foray with the Hell Riders, and the sense of asking not Will it happen to me? but When will it happen to me?, remembered the hellfire flares she felt when one of her friends confided to her about [I don’t even want to think of that word]. Maybe that was why her father would shroud her in his coats during the walks they had when he intermittently visited. She remembered all the jokes people, especially the boys, would make about bars of soap in prison, remembered the one time she overheard some boys talk about what they’d do if they could freeze time, remembered the way people would show off the new Lolita movie at school alongside a copy of the book.[8] He grew up in this hellhole. I shouldn’t be surprised he knows about this shit. But knowing never did quell one’s sorrow and laments, and here she felt not for the first time the arching extent of the boy’s premature knowledge and understanding of the world.
“Anasui hasn’t been around either, huh?”
“I don’t think I mind his absence nearly as much as I do Weather’s.”
“I hear you there, kiddo.” She laughed and he gave a weak smile in response.
“Do you miss hugging someone in your sleep?”
The boy sat silent, unsure of how to respond.
“Emporio, you haven’t been able to sleep…” She leaned forward. This was the moment of truth, and she still wasn’t sure how to actually broker the question. She liked the idea, but actually asking a kid about it made her feel suspect. She remembered the girls at school passing around a manga named Loveless. The contents were somehow lukewarm and shocking, and here she felt almost like Soubi Agatsuma asking Ritsuka Aoyagi to pierce his ears. Was Emporio aware of what “sleep with you” meant? Sure, it triplicated into cuddling asleep or a child crawling into their parents’ bed and slumbering, but as she approached the broken angel before her she feared it’d be taken wrong, that Big Righteous above would descend to smite her, in spite of her intentions being pure.
Nothing about this was right.
This whole place was a panorama of misery. Prison was an isolatory hell where the undesirables, the untouchables were exiled
(you’d rather see me in the pen than me and Lorenzo ridin’ in a benzo)[9]
(officer from overseer, need a little clarity? Check the similarities)[10]
from the world, but here in Green Dolphin there had been gathered by demonic trumpets supernatural powers that had deracinated her from everyday life. And in the middle of it there was born by unknown circumstances the boy who had come to mean a little brother and a son, a boy who had known no normal life, a child whose only blood had been cleansed, a kid far too intelligent for his age and not in the manner of Duane McBride from Summer of Night or Detective Conan or the cast of Digimon. She might have been too young for the latter role, but she understood even in and because of their brief acquaintance the motherly tones of an older sister’s love and affection for her younger fraternal. She knew at least that the Japanese form of addressing a woman of her age was the same for addressing a sister: onee-san.
“I could take Weather’s role if you’d like. Until he recovers.”
It was his turn to be shocked, and shocked he was!
“S-S-Sure.” He broke eye contact for the first time and had his orbitals dart around.
“It’s…kind of cramped in here.”
The lid prop held the hood up. Jolyne’s shape was shadowed as her body impeded the light. Emporio pulled from his fanny bag a rose dotted blanket. “Oh my God, Ermes would love that blanket. I see that kind a lot in Latino households. They always have interesting ones with tigers and shit.”[11] He handed it to her and raised his arms to hold the hood from his position. “Take out that stick and set it on the keyboard.” She did as told.
“Hold up.” With one hand she held the hood up. “I’ll set it down for you. As I said, rely on me.” The boy nodded as he laid himself. As she put herself in a similar position, as she lowered the hood and as the shadows overtook the world, she felt the piano deepen as if they were in a coffin descending into the grave.
There was only a sliver of light left, a crack in the black, and the organs of the piano had disappeared. The inside was smoother now, and they had space. It was only a small amount, but it was enough that they could actually move and pose. The only problem was the surface on which they laid. It wasn’t the worst way to sleep, but she could already feel the back pain of the coming morning.
She let the hood drop, and darkness flooded the world. They were now dependent on the tactile and auricular. She felt the weight of the blanket come over them both, and she turned to his direction as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She blinked away the retinal flashes, and after a few minutes her sight gained an impression of the boy. She couldn’t make heads or tails of his expression.
He was unsure of the next course of action. His chest hadn’t buzzed in this manner for years. He remembered crawling through the vents to reach Weather’s room, crawling over the man and curling by his side where there was little space, placing himself shortly after into his arms and falling asleep. The little child he once was seemed foreign to him now as he took in the reality of Jolyne’s presence and of how shier he had become. The old Him had simply done the task, didn’t even ask, but here he was rattled with anxiety to ask anything of Jolyne in spite of every part of him aching to feel her embrace once more. In his mind he groped for something and found her words from earlier: Rely on me.
“How have you relied on me? I still don’t understand that.”
“Well, you give us this room and other hiding spots. You gave us that map a while ago which really helped us.” She paused. “Oh! When we first met, you gave me that bone. I held onto it and it woke me up at some point, a very important point. I couldn’t have survived without it. I wouldn’t be here without it.
“I wouldn’t be here without you.”
Emporio was silent.
“It’s just that I wish I could help more.”
“In what way?”
“I want to fight, but my Stand…it’s not like yours or Weather’s or anyone else’s. I feel…” He fell silent again as he approached the breached limits of his maturity.
Jolyne frowned and was glad the darkness hid that from him. “Emporio, extend your hand.” She heard a rustle. She felt around and landed on his small hand. She filled his interdigital folds with her fingers. She felt him hesitate, then felt his own digits close in. “What do you feel?”
He gulped, certain she heard it. The words slowly ascended as his voice shook. “I feel useless…” He felt her tighten her grip.
Silence reigned for an undeterminable amount of time. He enjoyed the warmth of her hand and realized how much he had missed it. During the intervening hours he clasped his hands in a poor simulacrum of what he felt now.
“Why…do you feel useless?”
He craned his head downward in spite of barely being visible. Or maybe because of it. “I can’t fight like everyone else does. I can’t heal like you and Foo can, I can’t do what Weather and Anasui and Ermes do.” He felt her thumb gently stroke his dorsal’s center.
“You’re a very smart kid, do you know that? You’re smarter than a lot of people my age and help us out a ton. Fighting’s not the only way to help us.”
He paused. “Jolyne, how do you do it?”
“Hm? Do what?”
“Be…you. I remember when we met you became resolved to revive your dad, even though I said he was dead, that a dead body can only rot. But you still became determined. I don’t think I would have done the same.”
“…
“I think I became resolved in part thanks to you. You were resolved to stop me from visiting my dad, but that ended up working out for me, kind of. If you hadn’t given me that bone, my dad would just be rotting and I’d be doing nothing. I…have complicated feelings for him, but if things had gone different, I wouldn’t be after the perp. You might think you failed, but really it helped me in the end. Because I met you. You’re the one who informed Ermes, remember?”
“Yeah…”
“Part of the reason I stayed was you.” She felt his hand tremble for a moment. “Not just because you steered me in the right direction, but because I care about you. I know how you feel, Emporio. I can’t explain everything right now, but one day you’ll realize how much we’ve relied on you. You…you might even come to hate us for it when you do. You have a lot on your shoulders. I don’t know if you’ll understand this right now, but you’re sort of, like, off-loading it for now. But at this moment you’re feeling some of it come in, aren’t you?”
“I think so…”
“Do you feel a pain in your chest?”
“Y-yes.”
“That’s what I mean. When I met you my immediate thought was ‘What’s his story?’ You know this place is bad, but you don’t…” She groped for a better word, one that couldn’t be taken as demeaning. “You don’t…”
“Comprehend?”
“I guess that’s a good word. What I mean is, the full gravity of things aren’t there yet. You’ve gone through a lot, Emporio. When you told me about your mom, I was surprised by how you said it. You said it’d be hard to say, but you said it anyway. Do you know something?”
“Huh?”
“I admire you.”
His palpitation strengthened, and the tenebrors blurred.
“You’re a brave boy. That was my second thought.” She brought his hand closer to herself. “You’re tough for living here. You’re stronger than you know. Even now I had to rely on you for a word.”
“…
“I look up to you, too, Jolyne.”
“How do you feel now?”
He paused. “I think I feel a bit better now.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I know you can’t see me, but I’m smiling. At you and for you.”
“Do you think I’ll ever be able to fight?”
“I’m sure you will.
“Oh! When we get out of here, I could probably take you to a dojo or something. You already know how to aim and shoot a gun, so you’ve got that going for fighting. But you just being here does more than enough. That’s something I didn’t understand when I was your age. One day, Emporio, you’ll know just how much your presence means to those around you.”
“I just wish that day were now. When did you learn that?”
She lay silent for a moment, flipping through her memory. “I think when I was 14. The day will come, I promise. And I promise to be there.” She undid the entanglement of their hands, curled all his fingers save for his pinkie, did the same for her hand then joined their sole extended digits. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m getting you out of here. I’m getting you a proper home. I’m getting you justice. I’m getting you a normal life.”
“…
“Thank you, Jolyne.”
“I’m smiling for you again.”
“Uhm…you said I could rely on you, correct?”
“Of course.”
His heartbeat quickened once more. “And Weather Report told you everything, correct? Could I…” He stammered and she did not respond. “Could…I,” one final stutter, “could you hug me?”
She extended her arms and felt the boy’s shoulders. “Of course.” She heard the boy scoot over to her, felt him and his warmth enter her space and thus arms. She felt his arms wrap around her shoulders, his hands clasp over the protruding top of her spine’s end. He felt her arms pull him closer as they maneuvered to be below his arms, and finally felt them squeeze him. It was only when she finally had him in her arms, her head over his as she had done earlier that she realized he had removed his hat and, much to both her joy and sorrow, that the boy had been crying. She felt his tears smear her throat and roll to her chest.
His voice slurred from impending sleep “I care about you, too, Jolyne.”
She kissed the top of his head. “I care about you more.”
The boy fell silent.
A few minutes later she felt his soft breath brush against her throat and heard his light snoring.
As she fell into the clutches of sleep she heard herself whisper something she had longed to tell him, a set of phrases that hadn’t escaped her mind since her father’s visit, a declaration that had come to echo like one’s pulse, two sentences that arose with her in each awakening and drowned with her in each slumbering:
“I love you, Emporio. I’ll kill anyone that hurts you.”
Annotations
1] A word of my creation. “Ad” is a Latin prefix meaning “toward,” as in “direction,” “tendency,” or “addition.” “Lapsarian” refers to the fall of mankind or a person who believes mankind has fallen from a better state.
[2] It wasn’t an article, I was thinking of something from a textbook in AP HuGe (Human Geography) which upset me in freshman year.
[3] “MUD” stands for “Multi-User Dungeon” which was an early text-based form of PC gaming that combined elements of online play and often had RPG mechanics, and whatever tropes and contrivances come with fantasy and sci-fi.
[4] A reference to Loveless by Yun Kouga, an early 2000s manga series that most people have forgotten about. It’s centers a 12-year-old boy named Ritsuka Aoyagi whose older brother was murdered. At one point he has to meet people in a game called “Wisdom Resurrection.” I figured I should steal the title.
[5] “A haven in the rift” is a phrase from Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth. The staple Velvet Room of the Jungian franchise is reduced to a floor, a couch, two chained doors, a staircase, all within a void. One of the attendants refers to the place as a “haven in the rift,” and it’s stuck with me all these years.
[6] “Aztec red” is a reference to Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
[7] Capcom and the Canadian company Ocean Productions made a bit of a mess of Rockman.EXE nomenclature. In Japan the original games and the subsequent anime and manga adaptations are simply Rockman.EXE. When the games were localized it was retitled to Megaman Battle Network, which is fine enough but the dub of the anime changed it again to Megaman NT Warrior, which the manga adaptation was also titled when it was brought over to North America. I simply went with “Megaman.EXE” to make things simpler.
[8] I should explain it here: the book Lolita is not pro-pedophilia as all outsiders are made to believe by the Stanley Kubrick movie, which codified the “bombshell blonde” look of Dolores Haze for decades to come, and the Adrian Lyne movie which codified the Lana Del Rey aesthetics that would dominate the 2010s. That was never Nabokov’s intention, but sadly most people can’t seem to wrap their heads around creators making reprehensible characters without condoning their actions, and many readers, especially male readers, fall for H.H’s traps and reveal themselves to be demons. For more information on the subject, I recommend “Lolita Podcast” by Jamie Loftus.
[9] From “Fuck Tha Police” by NWA.
[10] From “Sound of da Police” by KRS-One.
[11] “Ethnic blankets,” as I’ve heard some say. Shortly after writing this I came across an Instagram reel joking about Mexicans having such blankets. I never saw it as peculiar or particular until recently since I only had my community as a reference point for everything.